Arthur Ravenel
In 1990, Republican consultant Rod Shealy was running a campaign to elect his sister, Sherry Martschink, Lieutenant Governor of South Carolina. In an attempt to increase voter turnout, he devised a scheme to play to the racial fears of white South Carolinians, recruiting an unemployed black fisherman, BenjaminHunt Jr., to run for U.S. Congress in the primary against incumbent Republican Arthur Ravenel. In putting a black man on the ballot, Shealy hoped to drivewhite voters to the polls—white voters who were also likely to vote for his sister in the lieutenant governor race. Although he was convicted of violating campaign laws and paid a $500 fine, Shealy later brushed it off as merely a “political parking ticket.”